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on Economics of Ageing |
| By: | Gal Wettstein; Alice Zulkarnain |
| Abstract: | As people age and their health starts to deteriorate, their need for help in daily life increases. Normal activities become more difficult as they lose the strength, flexibility, and agility required for basic routines such as dressing, buying groceries, and handling finances. To assist with such activities, one option is formal caregiving services. However, cost concerns and personal preferences lead many people to first turn to informal care from family members, particularly children. While formal care has a clear monetary cost, the burdens of informal care are harder to pin down. This brief uses the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) to estimate how many adult children provide care to their parents and the extent of their caregiving burden. The caregiving issue is becoming increasingly important. In the coming decade, baby boomers will begin reaching their 80s, an age when the need for care rises substantially. This cohort is larger than earlier generations, but also had fewer children per household. The resulting higher ratio of parents to children suggests a potentially bigger burden for the boomers’ children than for previous generations. To the extent that this burden is too much to handle, it will likely fall on formal care providers and insurers, particularly public programs like Medicaid. This brief proceeds as follows. The first section presents data on the need for care among the elderly and on how much care is provided by adult children. The second section synthesizes recent research on the burden of care provision borne by adult children. The final section concludes that while only a moderate share of adult children provide care for their parents, those who do so contribute a lot of time and effort. The provision of informal care, therefore, can have significant implications for the caregivers’ financial health and overall well-being. |
| Date: | 2017–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crr:issbrf:ib2017-11&r=age |
| By: | Polman, Fabian M.; Krijgsman, Cees; Dajani, Karma; Hemminga, Marcus A. |
| Abstract: | Longevity risk is the risk arising from uncertainty in the prediction of future mortality. This risk must be faced by pension funds. The legislation for Dutch pension funds prescribes that the pension funds need to keep in reserve a certain level of capital for this risk. De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB), the regulator of the legislation, suggests a method for calculating this capital requirement. In this paper an alternative method is developed, that provides a better insight in the current risk. Moreover, it turns out that the resulting capital requirement from our method is less than half of the capital requirement calculated using the method suggested by DNB. |
| Keywords: | Longevity risk, capital requirement for longevity risk, Dutch pension fund, stochastic mortality, Monte Carlo simulations |
| JEL: | C15 C51 C53 G23 H55 J11 |
| Date: | 2017–05–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:79438&r=age |
| By: | Toru Ota (Toho Gas Corporation); Makoto Kakinaka (Graduate School for International Development and Cooperation, Hiroshima University); Koji Kotani (School of Economics and Management, Kochi University of Technology) |
| Abstract: | Japan has been confronted with two demographic forces, declining fertility rates and lengthening life spans, which give rise to the rising ratio of the elderly (aging society), the decline in population and the prevalence of nuclear families. This study empirically analyzes demographic effects on residential electricity and city gas consumption in Japan. Our analysis presents the following main results. First, the aging of the society decreases the electricity demand but increases the city gas demand. Second, the shrink of population with the prevalence of nuclear families increases the electricity demand but decreases the city gas demand. The direction of the demand for each alternative depends on the balancing of the first and second effects. Third, the analysis also shows clear results about the own- and cross-price effects. Ongoing energy market reforms targeting price reduction would increase the energy demand with the possible substitutability between the two energy sources. Our case study of Japan is a lso applicable to other countries that will, have just started to, experience the similar demographic pattern of the aging society with energy market deregulation. |
| Keywords: | Demographic changes, aging society, energy markets, electricity and city gas demands |
| Date: | 2017–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:kch:wpaper:sdes-2017-7&r=age |
| By: | Richard J. Manski; Jody Schimmel Hyde; Haiyan Chen; John F. Moeller |
| Abstract: | The purpose of this article is to explore differences in the socioeconomic, demographic characteristics of older adults in the United States with respect to their use of different types of dental care services. |
| Keywords: | dental insurance, coverage, dental use, service type |
| JEL: | I |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mpr:mprres:88b60d4ce4164ba1a619944834729382&r=age |
| By: | Samia Amin; Greg Chojnacki; Irma Perez-Johnson; Mikia Manley; Aravind Moorthy; Matthew Darling; Jaclyn Lefkowitz |
| Abstract: | This infographic summarizes findings from Mathematica's behavioral insights study conducted for the U.S. Department of Labor's Employee Benefits Security Administration (EBSA). |
| Keywords: | infographic, behavioral, insights, EBSA, retirement, labor |
| JEL: | J |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mpr:mprres:8365ccd6b1774e90b6359209084895c9&r=age |
| By: | Samia Amin; Greg Chojnacki; Irma Perez-Johnson; Matthew Darling; Aravind Moorthy; Jaclyn Lefkowitz |
| Abstract: | This project brief summarizes findings from Mathematica's behavioral insights study conducted for the U.S. Department of Labor's Employee Benefits Security Administration (EBSA). |
| Keywords: | labor, behavioral, insights, retirement, emails, EBSA |
| JEL: | J |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mpr:mprres:5e82fd292f944ebabb4f00abb5484934&r=age |
| By: | Samia Amin; Greg Chojnacki; Aravind Moorthy; Irma Perez-Johnson; Matt Darling; Jaclyn Lefkowitz |
| Abstract: | This report provides findings from Mathematica's behavioral insights study conducted for the U.S. Department of Labor's Employee Benefits Security Administration. |
| Keywords: | retirement, behavioral, insights, nudge, EBSA, savings |
| JEL: | J |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mpr:mprres:a8c7659af90e498bb181f23495b2d04b&r=age |
| By: | Juan Pablo Atal; Hanming Fang; Martin Karlsson; Nicolas R. Ziebarth |
| Abstract: | We study theoretically and empirically how consumers in an individual private long-term health insurance market with front-loaded contracts respond to newly mandated portability requirements of their old-age provisions. To foster competition, effective 2009, German legislature made the portability of standardized old-age provisions mandatory. Our theoretical model predicts that the portability reform will increase internal plan switching. However, under plausible assumptions, it will not increase external insurer switching. Moreover, the portability reform will enable unhealthier enrollees to reoptimize their plans. We find confirmatory evidence for the theoretical predictions using claims panel data from a big private insurer. |
| JEL: | G22 I11 I18 |
| Date: | 2017–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:23468&r=age |